“The community loved it as most of the sex workers chew paan,” Sanjeev Gaikwad, a director at advocacy group Family Health International who helped launch the new condom.

So you’ve probably heard of this by now. The sex workers who get these for free could sell them on ebay for some loot as they won’t be available for sale for a while. Here are some tid-bits I found web scouring:

Aastha is a specially designed condom, developed on the basis of feedback from Sex Workers (SWs). A test of chocolate, strawberry, banana and paan was carried out and there was widespread preference for the paan flavour (understandably so as the demand for oral sex on Commercial Sex Workers is rising and 90% of them consume paan).

Logo made from prize winning design through a painting competition among sex workers.

Tailored design based on feedback from sex workers.

Extensive use across extreme field conditions feeding into continuous quality improvement.

More than 13 million condoms distributed till date.

It is reported that they tested it out on prostitutes because they are the demographic that engages in fellatio. Men who frequent prostitutes in India frequently request and pay for fellatio, even (or especially) married men who’s wives are unwilling to engage in the same. Naturally prostitutes (and hopefully clients) want to practice safe sex. Hence, a flavored condom during the act may encourage healthy consciousness.

Now only if Shahrukh or Amitabh would do a pro-bono ad for them, this will be a runaway hit like Paan Banaras Wala